Right, but as a responsible consumer of news/information, shouldn't you have a basic obligation to digest information, consider the source, and make an evaluation on whether or not it's valid? It's a sad truth in contemporary American society that most people really don't think about the source of the news they're getting and the biases implicit in that. People like to paint with these huge "good channel vs. bad channel" brush strokes and fail to actually take any thought to evaluate anything. That's a different topic altogether (especially given the fact that a subset of current politicians are actively changing society's relationship with the very concept of news and journalism), but there parallels between that and reading research should be obvious.

Sure, studies with questionable conclusions exist in all fields. But surely one must stop and think "huh, that's odd" when a large portion of a particular community are finding things that are pointing towards a certain set of conclusions. Vetting research is a similar process as vetting news. You can't really expect to flip on a single news channel and take everything they say at face value, right?

You're right. Bias exists in both journalism and research without a doubt. But no, that is not an excuse to throw the baby out with the bathwater. It just means we must be extra diligent about processing information.

That said, in addition to the four linked articles, there are several more with supporting conclusions that I won't take the time to link. The research is happening all over the world, and there seems to be a consensus that there can be long term effects to COVID. Of course, the severity and scope of that remain to be seen.

Part of what I suspect is happening is related to fear. Just like with other world-scale events, there is no going back to normal after this. There was a "Pre-9/11" world and a "Post-9/11" world, I believe the same will be true with COVID. We're scared (and have every right to be) that our roles will be diminished in the "Post-COVID" world since so much of what we do is dependent on face to face time. I also think that people try to tune out or downplay the severity of COVID related news in an "out of sight, out of mind" type of coping mechanism. It was easy to not be up in arms about the PATRIOT act and to adjust to our new 9/11 normal since we could so clearly see the event that caused it all. But we can't as easily see the effects of COVID, so it's often easier to put up a mental wall and just say it's not there.

Ironically, I think the people calling others sheep are the most scared of them all.

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Most peer-reviewed research is funded by the pharmaceutical and big name medical companies themselves. Very little is funded by the government. Their “real” numbers and “science” are often biased towards the product they want to push.